Winning the Child's Will: Shaping the Consenting Citizen for Liberal Society in the United States, 1800-2000

Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life

Co-sponsored by American Studies, the History Department, the Department of Political Science, and the Institute for the Liberal Arts at Boston College.

Abstract: A democratic government requires the consent of its citizens. But how is that consent formed? Why should free people submit to any rule? Pursuing this question to its source, Block will argue that the explanation is to be found in the nursery and the schoolroom.

James E. Block is professor of Political Science at DePaul University. He is author of The Crucible of Consent: American Child Rearing and the Forging of Liberal Society and A Nation of Agents: The American Path to a Modern Self and Society. Block received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, his M.A. from the University of Sussex, a J.D. from New York University, and his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago.